Tag: relationship marketing

What happens when your product is a message, and the goal of that message is to get the community, investors and the media to believe in your cause and ultimately support you? Whether the product is gathering donations, collecting signatures or signing volunteers up there is just as much of a need for marketing as any good or service. Just as any product it must have value to the consumer, but what if the value is not tangible or has no guarantee of being accrued? How do we get people to believe in what we are trying to do? (Hint: Start a conversation, and read why it’s important here)

These are the challenges that nonprofits, coalitions, government programs and other cause –based entities face. Challenges surrounding business strategy, brand positioning, market research and other marketing dilemmas are constrained by factors such as limited budgets and resources, public opinion, uncertain sustainability and unique marketing success measures.

Limited Resources and Unique Success Measures

Cause-based organizations often have very limited budgets, which can tend to mean that marketing initiatives get pushed to the bottom of the list. One factor contributing to this trend is that marketing efforts cannot typically be measured by traditional means such as ROI. Marketers in nonprofits, for example, might have to get creative about how they measure their success. They might monitor their website and social media traffic during a campaign, or inspect sign-up rates on petitions and volunteer lists. These can be good indicators internally, but what happens when the organization reaches out to investors or the government for an increase in budget or resources? Proving that marketing initiatives have been successful in order to secure more capital for marketing efforts can be hard to sell based on these unique measures, particularly in a new or start-up organization.

Public Opinion

Success among many cause-based organizations is rooted in positive public opinion and public support. The Common Core State Standards Initiative, for example, is a program developed for voluntary adaptation into state school curriculum. Public support for this program was imperative in making it possible, as government, teachers and parents had to show their support in order for it to be initiated at state level. Common Core has somewhat of an image problem, with negative views from many parties, some who don’t even know exactly what it is. This negative publicity creates a complete barrier between supporting and opposing parties, leaving out room for compromises.

This effect of public opinion plagues many cause-based organizations, and leads to solutions derived from questions like: How does the messaging sound to multiple parties? What are areas of our cause that matter to society at large? How can negative opinions be prompted into effective discussion to better the cause and message? While public opinion and constructive criticism or praise can be very different things, the message that a cause-based organization takes to deal with it is very important. The role of marketing in this situation should be to act as a middleman between the organization and the community to sculpt effective and brand cohesive messaging.

Unsustainability

The sustainability of cause-based entities is often either unknown or pre-determined. The unknown time frame makes marketing efforts difficult. For example, a political candidate during the primaries does not have a definite time-frame on how long their campaign efforts will last for. In this event, the politician and the starting campaign team don’t know how long they will actually have to work for, since it is all determined by the voters. So the problem then becomes how does the marketing team create a plan when they don’t know how long they will be planning for? Short term objectives are often guided by long term objectives, so not knowing the exact long term goal can mean that marketers have to improvise and plan as they go. While this isn’t exactly a textbook strategy, it is real life marketing. One thing that helps guide marketers in this situation is determining the overall brand identity and message and sticking to it, crafting messages around it along the way.

Key Takeaways

Marketing for nonprofits, coalitions, government programs and other cause-based organizations can result in marketing headaches. Funds are tied up or dwindling, success measures aren’t cookie-cutter, public opinion is tearing down your carefully crafted message and you aren’t sure if anyone will even care about your cause in two years. It’s not all bad news though, because cause-based organizations are important to many groups of people, and can have a real effect on society and major social, political and environmental change. The work matters, even if it comes at a higher cost for marketing.

Have you ever worked on a marketing strategy for a cause-based marketing? If you have, what are some issues you have experienced in the marketing department? Or if you have not, are these issues something you have dealt with? Leave me a comment and let’s start a discussion. You can also Tweet me your experiences with the hashtag #MyMktgStory at @akannakeefe.

When you Tweet out a brand hashtag, attend a brand event or interact with a brand in other ways for the latest, coolest campaign you are adding to a brand conversation, and you are participating with a community around a brand. It’s all part of a marketing strategy, but it doesn’t feel pushy or promotional. Why? Because the consumer is willingly participating in the conversation and the community, which ultimately makes the entire experience more authentic. Check out this blog article for some examples of what community marketing can include.

Community marketing focuses on existing consumers, and engaging them in your brand.

This leads us to community marketing and why it matters.

First, Let’s Talk About Community.

A community is a group of people that share common beliefs, interests and goals. Communities are also social organizations, and can share similar cultures. As humans, we naturally gather into communities, and we thrive in them as social beings. This is good news to marketing, and may be interesting especially if you enjoy the psychology behind marketing.

Communities Share

Communities share among themselves, and this is where word-of-mouth marketing and active consumer interaction come into play. If you can engage your current customers, you can continue to build relationships with them. This is an entirely different approach than marketing to potential consumers.

Communities become brand advocates, and typically we also see the innovators and early adopters in communities. An overplayed, but valuable example is Apple enthusiasts. Apple has built one of the strongest communities surrounding their brand. This community is rooted in the fact that they believe in the vision of Apple, and they support it 100%. This is why people line up for hours for new releases, and why people will argue undoubtedly why Apple is better than any other personal device brand. The Apple community will share why they love Apple with friends, family and even strangers, creating a network of Apple advocates around the world.

Communities Support

To discuss and illustrate this point let’s start with an example.

Fitbit, the smart fitness device has created a community to help people support one another through their fitness goals. Fitbit uses a game-type setup through their app and website to get users to compete with friends and family. This creates a culture of support, and a little bit of healthy competition, among users. The seamless integration of the software with the fitness device is a great selling point, and the competition that users have with one another gets them talking about the Fitbit and spreading the word.

Why Should You Create a Conversation?

Conversations are one way to create authenticity and trust with your consumers. While social media is the one platform we may think of when creating and sustaining conversations with consumers, there are other ways to do it. Community marketing can happen wherever the community is, and the conversation should be something the community is interested in.

Authentic Conversations

One of the struggles that marketers have when trying to have a conversation with a consumer is how to make it seem authentic. One of the best examples of where these authentic and real-life conversations take place is on Snapchat. This Hubspot article goes into depth about it, and brings up some great points. Two of the points that the article makes are that Snapchat “enables realness” and “puts social media back into these personal, organic moments”. This one-to-one type interaction enables conversation from a brand to the consumer in a more authentic and down-to-earth kind of way. While Snapshat is just one example, the important thing to keep in mind is that it’s all about authenticity and being real with consumers.

Key Takeaways

Marketing is trending towards more authentic experiences and interactions and building and sustaining communities. Real life, down to earth brands are characteristics that consumers are looking for and willing to support. Having a brand community and participating in conversations with consumers are two ways to enhance a brand. Are you involved in any brand communities? Do you participate in brand conversations? Tell me below and Tweet me @akannakeefe with the hashtag #mymktgstory.

As promised last week here is the second installment of why I love marketing. In my last blog post, click here if you haven’t read it, I talked about the first reason I like marketing. The first thing I like is that it is data-driven. For me the data-driven aspect is important because it gives all the work marketers do some solid ground to stand on. On the flip side are some more intangible aspects of marketing that I love, which include the ability to be creative and personal.

Why I love marketing:

Data-driven.

Creative.

Personal

So, What’s The Deal With Creativity?

As I start thinking about all of the things that go into the marketing work that I do it isn’t all glamorous. Most of the hard work is crunching numbers, brainstorming ideas countless times, researching your market, industry, and consumer, staying in budget, and getting your idea to be supported by the data. These are all important aspects that must be accomplished in order for the creativity to happen.

The final product of a kick-ass marketing campaign relies on all aspects working together. It is like a three-legged stool; without one aspect it won’t work, all must be present.

Creativity Connects & Inspires

I love the creative aspect of marketing because it allows all the hard work you’ve done behind the scenes to come out and shine. It has the chance to connect with consumers, make an impression, and be memorable. Think about some of your favorite commercials, what made them so special? For me, a standout piece of marketing work involves a presentation that connects things I haven’t thought of or is innovative and exciting. Creativity is memorable. Creativity is powerful. Creativity can drive the message home.

Let’s Get Personal

Marketing has the ability to tell a brand story – to connect and influence. Marketing can also reach an emotional truth that speaks to the brand story and to the consumers own experiences.

Marketing gets personal, and when a company allows marketing to do just that it can be a huge advantage.

Personal Touches

A great example of this is birthday promotions. It was recently my birthday and during the few weeks leading up to it I had gotten several emails personally addressed to me, wishing me a happy birthday and offering some kind of promotion. This personal touch, made possible via databases (check out my previous article about data and marketing), made me happy. These companies remembered, or rather programmed, my birthday! They wanted to celebrate with me, and that is the personal touch that matters.

Having marketing that feels personal doesn’t have to be directed at a single person, it can be broader, such as targeting a niche and filling their needs and wants, essentially speaking to an emotional truth that the group may collectively feel.

Key Takeaways

I love marketing because it has power to shape consumers and the way we think about certain products, services, and ideas. The creativity behind marketing allows us to see things in a new way, and can influence the work we continue to see for years to come. The other major influence on why I love marketing is that it is personal. Being personal in a world where we are seemingly connected all of the time yet distanced by technology is the bridge between being seen and being remembered. Get personal with your audience – make your time count.

About Me

I am a marketing graduate from the University of
Northern Colorado. Marketing isn't just my discipline, it is my passion. My passion for marketing is telling the story of a brand, it’s helping to serve the community, and it’s finding the sweet spot at the intersection of data and creativity.